Marietta National Cemetery

Feb 2024

Think I've answered this before, I found the cemetery to be peaceful and enormous, a surprise indeed. Its well looked after and has many many markers for its military people who gave there lives in many wars, and military excursions..its worth a visit, I didn't thinknit would be but I was wrong, very wrong.. go take a look it will not harm you, in fact the opposite it might stir and move you ....

Jul 2023

Came here for the history and found plenty of it. Cemetery is well taken care of. The Union army prepared for the Atlanta Campaign, hoping to quickly divide the Confederate army, sever major transportation/communication lines, and decimate Atlanta. Major General William Tecumseh Sherman massed more than 100,000 men, including the Armies of the Cumberland, the Ohio, and the Tennessee, and set out from Chattanooga in May 1864. They faced off against 55,000 Confederate soldiers led by General Joseph E. Johnston, and later General John B. Hood.On June 10, the Confederates set up a defensive line north of Marietta, between Pine Mountain and Brush Mountain. Johnston was forced to retreat Kennesaw Mountain. In this vicinity, the Union and Confederacy traded victories at the Battles of Kolb's Farm and Kennesaw Mountain. Eventually, the Union pressed the Confederates back towards Atlanta, with Sherman finally capturing the city on September 2. In November, the city of Marietta became the first casualty of Sherman's "March to the Sea," after Union General Hugh Kilpatrick set the city ablaze.The site of the national cemetery was once a proposed location for the Confederate Capitol building. The owner of the land, Henry Greene Cole, a Marietta businessman and Union loyalist, offered to donate the property as a cemetery for both Union and Confederate soldiers, but there was no agreement on the offer. Eventually, Cole donated the land for use as a national cemetery, and in 1866, a program to reinter nearly 10,000 Union dead from Sherman's Atlanta campaign began at the new cemetery, which was originally known as the Marietta and Atlanta Cemetery. Over the next 3 years Union soldiers from Dalton to Augusta were disinterred and reinterred at the Marietta National Cemetery. These men had been buried with wooden grave markers, and by 1869, when the last group was transferred, many of the markers and the names were gone. More than 17,000 men are buried here, more than 3,000 of them unknown.To thank Cole, the Federal Government named him the first superintendent of the cemetery, and provided a burial plot for the Cole family. Henry died April 17, 1875, and is buried in Grave 1 of the Cole Section.

Oct 2021

Proud to see they honored all who lay here by putting the U.S. flag in front of each headstone, known & unknown. Last year Covid won, this year our service members won. Thanks to those who put out the 18,700 plus flags. It was a beautiful place to remember my mom & dad on Memorial Day!